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This is why Zeus, although the oldest of the gods and their
sovereign, advances first [in the Phaidros myth] towards that
vision, followed by gods and demigods and such souls as are of
strength to see. That Being appears before them from some unseen
place and rising loftily over them pours its light upon all
things, so that all gleams in its radiance; it upholds some
beings, and they see; the lower are dazzled and turn away, unfit
to gaze upon that sun, the trouble falling the more heavily on
those most remote.
Of those looking upon that Being and its content, and able to
see, all take something but not all the same vision always:
intently gazing, one sees the fount and principle of Justice,
another is filled with the sight of Moral Wisdom, the original of
that quality as found, sometimes at least, among men, copied by
them in their degree from the divine virtue which, covering all
the expanse, so to speak, of the Intellectual Realm is seen, last
attainment of all, by those who have known already many splendid
visions.
The gods see, each singly and all as one. So, too, the souls;
they see all There in right of being sprung, themselves, of that
universe and therefore including all from beginning to end and
having their existence There if only by that phase which belongs
inherently to the Divine, though often too they are There entire,
those of them that have not incurred separation.
This vision Zeus takes, and it is for such of us, also, as share
his love and appropriate our part in the Beauty There, the final
object of all seeing, the entire beauty upon all things; for all
There sheds radiance, and floods those that have found their way
thither so that they too become beautiful; thus it will often
happen that men climbing heights where the soil has taken a
yellow glow will themselves appear so, borrowing colour from the
place on which they move. The colour flowering on that other
height we speak of is Beauty; or rather all There is light and
beauty, through and through, for the beauty is no mere bloom upon
the surface.
To those that do not see entire, the immediate impression is
alone taken into account; but those drunken with this wine,
filled with the nectar, all their soul penetrated by this beauty,
cannot remain mere gazers: no longer is there a spectator outside
gazing on an outside spectacle; the clear-eyed hold the vision
within themselves, though, for the most part, they have no idea
that it is within but look towards it as to something beyond them
and see it as an object of vision caught by a direction of the
will.
All that one sees as a spectacle is still external; one must
bring the vision within and see no longer in that mode of
separation but as we know ourselves; thus a man filled with a
god- possessed by Apollo or by one of the Muses- need no longer
look outside for his vision of the divine being; it is but
finding the strength to see divinity within.
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